Background:
I use a Zooz Z-Wave plug to remotely reset my Silicon Dust HD Prime Tuners and associated Tuning Resolvers when they act up and I’m not home and I control this through Vera.
Scenario:
My VeraPlus occasionally acts up when I’m not home and I cannot do anything until I get home and if on Vacation, this may not be for days.
Solution:
Get a WiFi or Insteon (I have an Insteon Hub to control Fanlincs) Receptacle to remotely power cycle the VeraPlus
sonoff or xiaomi remote controlled power socket are options, but even cheaper would be a basic timer switch. Brutal, but would do the job. Personally though, and cheapest (free) as well as a little cleaner, all I’ve done is created a scene that once a day at around 1am from Monday to Sat it runs “luup.reload()” and once a week on Sunday it runs “os.execute( ‘reboot’ )”
Are those power sockets controllable from outside the LAN over the internet?
So you just power cycle it without regard if it needs it or not? What house mode are you in when this happens? I think that if mine is in any mode but Home mode the doorbells that tell me that a window or door is open may start ringing.
What are the differences between those lua codes?
This would still not get the Vera restarted when it has stopped responding for whatever reason.
Are those power sockets controllable from outside the LAN over the internet?
So you just power cycle it without regard if it needs it or not? What house mode are you in when this happens? I think that if mine is in any mode but Home mode the doorbells that tell me that a window or door is open may start ringing.
What are the differences between those lua codes?
This would still not get the Vera restarted when it has stopped responding for whatever reason.[/quote]
Correct that if the Vera has totally frozen then nether of those commands will help. When I was having issues, it was I suspect due to a memory leak by a ‘bad’ app. As such, the regular restarting of the Luup engine (the first code helped) with the weekly reboot (the second code) cleaning out anything nasty and avoided Vera totally freezing.
The power sockets I mention can all be controlled remotely via cloud services, independent of Vera. Personally though, I’d try the scenes first as it’s much cleaner (Vera shuts down and restarts properly) and - as much as saving the current state might be of concern I would be even more concerned about it leading to a corrupt file system. A software restart is also free.
Way back when I was having issues I also considered setting up a script on the Vera that would regularly ‘touch’ (update) a file on my lan. A separate script running on a separate box would check that file and if it had not been updated for “nn” minutes (indicating the Vera was offline) it would then do a power cycle. I didn’t follow through with that though as a) I was more concerned about file system corruption by regularly doing something that should only be done as a last resort and b) the regular software reboot has fixed any reliability issue I might have had. If I’d done the script, I’d also need to ensure that it didn’t go into some sort of infinite loop ie only reboot maximum of once or twice a day.
Anyhow - try the software route. Honest. Only if it doesn’t reduce or prevent the issues would I consider putting in the failsafe plug. If however the code works for you as it has for me, then you can move on with your life.
FYI Initially I was restarting the Vera every day. I’ve now cleaned out a lot of apps I wasn’t using (after retiring the last of my X10 gear) and my Vera is more stable now. As a precaution though I still have it restart once a week.
So I think I’ll give that a whirl. Mine runs stable most of the time but the other day, I couldn’t get into it until I got home from work and rebooted it with a full power cycle. I think I’ll need to choose a different time than you use though as I have some scenes (pool pump) that run in the wee hours of the morning.
It is my feeble attempts to get Fanlincs working with the Insteon PowerLine Modem that cause errors. The only devices not responding for me right now is the fan speed control devices associated with the Fanlinc Dimmers… Been trying off and on to get that hammered out and Vera is no help in this regard.
[quote=“Sammy2, post:7, topic:197594”]So I think I’ll give that a whirl. Mine runs stable most of the time but the other day, I couldn’t get into it until I got home from work and rebooted it with a full power cycle. I think I’ll need to choose a different time than you use though as I have some scenes (pool pump) that run in the wee hours of the morning.
It is my feeble attempts to get Fanlincs working with the Insteon PowerLine Modem that cause errors. The only devices not responding for me right now is the fan speed control devices associated with the Fanlinc Dimmers… Been trying off and on to get that hammered out and Vera is no help in this regard.[/quote]
Definitely worth trying the script option first, like I say. And of course, pick a time/day that is most suitable for you. As for scenes running through the night I tend to break scenes up into two when they might run for more than a few minutes eg rather than having one scene that fires up the pool pump at 1am and then shuts it down 3 hours later, I would have one scene that starts the pump at 1am, and another that stops it at 4am. The reason I do that was because of the issues I was having way back when that in turn meant sometimes a scene that had a long timer on it would fail. My Vera is a lot more reliable now but I still break up my scenes to make them as robust and ‘random outage’ proof as possible.
FWIW Pretty certain that the main culprit causing issues for my Vera was talking to the usb X10 kit, so perhaps your old Insteon kit is causing similar issues. I now have a pile of legacy X10 stuff that is either going into the tip or eBay! I recently got some Aeotec nano dimmers that also apparently can control fans…
[quote=“Sammy2, post:1, topic:197594”]Solution:
Get a WiFi or Insteon (I have an Insteon Hub to control Fanlincs) Receptacle to remotely power cycle the VeraPlus
I am looking for cheap solutions for this.[/quote]
I happen to already have a MyQ gateway for my garage doors so I added a light control for this purpose for about $22. But not a cheap solution if you don’t already have MyQ in place.
Thinking about implementing the scheduled reloads and possibly reboots. I get spontaneous reloads pretty regularly and haven’t been able to isolate a particular cause. Wondering if weekly reboot might help.
I have a Wink Hub (for my Caseta lights) so added an extra z-wave switch to it to control the Vera as needed.
There is also a product I use with my router called a MSN Switch that will reboot automatically if a network connection goes down, or manually (if you set up port forwarding). Down side is the switch is expensive and the Vera responds to pings usually when of it is hung so the switch cannot detect that Vera is hung so had to be rebooted manually.
I know some folks just put their Vera on a dumb timer and power cycle it every night. That way if it does hang you know the max you have to wait is 24hours for it to power cycle. Good cheap solutions for remote properties.
I use WeMo switch for such case, there are also TP-Link switches on the market.
I don’t know US prices, but for EU used WeMo costs c.a. 25-30 EUR
In case of TP-Link it is the price for a new unit.
Or you can buy some older, used z-wave controller and attach z-wave switch to it.
